Traditional 3D computer models, color laser printing, and photogrammetric based maps and images have provided photographic and other forms of representations of buildings, terrain, objects, and artifacts.
Traditional drawings used in the architecture, engineering and construction industry (AEC industry) take the form of blueprints. Traditional blueprints are one-color print documents of an object. Traditional blueprints provide one-color line drawings that use a wire frame representation of an object and are also sometimes referred to as “line art” or “spot color” in the graphics art industry. Such traditional drawings may be adequate in the AEC industry for new constructions as the object of the drawing may not yet exist (i.e., may not yet be constructed). Such traditional blueprints and line art drawings, however, are deficient as such traditional drawings only provide minimal information in the wire frame about the object. It is therefore desirable to provide line drawings with enhanced detail.
Traditional photogrammetric techniques for the AEC industry produce rectified and orthogonally corrected images (“orthophotos” or “orthoimages”), partially rectified, or unrectified images that may be converted into two Dimensional (2D) wire frame models primarily through manual processes on a drafting board or partially manual processes with the aid of a computer assisted drafting board or computer tableau (e.g., CAD/CAM).
Additionally, traditional photogrammetric techniques can be used with CAD/CAM to produce three dimensional (3D) models in either wire frame or textured surface models. Such models can be used for buildings and other objects. End-user blueprints in some cases cannot be created from these techniques, however. As a result, these techniques are deficient. For example, 3D models are difficult to depict in a visually useful way on a 2D surface (e.g., paper) and textured surface models are in a continuous, black and white tone that does not reproduce well by blueprint, fax, and photo copy commonly used in the AEC industry.
Traditional models and images also tend to be relatively large in file size and consume large amounts of storage space and transmission bandwidth. 2D wire frame models, while easy to reproduce as blueprints, have eliminated much useful information from original photographic or other images. Accordingly, blueprints that provide only line art in one color are widely used due to the deficiencies of such 2D and 3D models but are yet still deficient in their own right.
As discussed above, traditional drawings used in the AEC industry of existing structures are wire frame style line art drawings produced as blueprints. After a structure is built, drawings are traditionally redrafted to reflect the structure in its “as-built” condition. Large format photocopiers are used in the AEC industry to produce “record drawings” of newly completed structures when hand written notations on “working drawings” of completed projects must be preserved in multiple copies for architects, owners, and contractors.
Redrafting projects using CAD/CAM to as-built conditions, however, is labor intensive and costly. Detailed features (e.g., stone masonry joints or facade surface detail) is not included in “as-built” drawings because of the difficulty of creating accurate images by traditional CAD/CAM methods, difficulty or impossibility of displaying information in blueprint form, costs, and other factors.
FIG. 1 shows prior art manual process 100 that manually takes information from field measurements of a physical object (e.g., step 110) and metric photography (e.g., step 112). Information from both these sources is then merged in a manual process (e.g., step 114) to prepare a CAD/CAM drawings production (e.g., step 116). During/after the preparation of some/all of a CAD/CAM drawing of an object, measurements on the drawing are manually correlated with the field measurements taken of the object (e.g., step 118). Manually gathering field measurements and manually matching field measurements to the drawing scale is labor intensive. The manual process produces a wire frame style drawing (e.g., in step 199) that is a 2D drawing. Such a 2D drawing is reproduced in a one-color blueprint representation of the object. Such a process is deficient as each of the several steps of gathering field measurements, merging photographic information with physical measurements, cross-checking scale drawings to field measurements, and the actual production of the CAD/CAM drawing itself is labor intensive. It is therefore desirable to provide a less labor intensive process of fabricating drawings.
A prior art processed image is shown in image 1100 of FIG. 11, which is absent of detail of stone texture 1012 of FIG. 10 (loss of detail 1112) and paint drops 1014 of FIG. 10 (loss of detail 1114). Also it is difficult to determine if area 1118 on FIG. 11 is masonry or wood. One skilled in the art would likely determine that area 1112 in FIG. 11 is the wood sill of the window and based on its proximity and the form factor of the abutment to 1118, that 1118 is probably wood trim exterior framing. Such a non-definite determination, however, is disadvantageous.